Great Earthquakes In Diverse Places
Strong earthquake hits the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge
PACIFIC OCEAN (BNO NEWS) — A strong earthquake struck the
Pacific-Antarctic Ridge on early Saturday morning, seismologists said
on Sunday.
The 6.4-magnitude earthquake at 5.18 a.m. local time (1518 GMT) on
Saturday was centered on the Pacific-Antarctic Ridge, a divergent
tectonic plate boundary located on the seafloor of the South Pacific
Ocean, separating the Pacific Plate from the Antarctic Plate. It struck
about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) below the seabed, making it a shallow
earthquake, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS).
With New Zealand about 3,480 kilometers (2,160 miles) away to the
southeast, no one could have felt the earthquake. It was also not
strong enough to generate a tsunami.
The USGS had earlier measured the strength of the earthquake at 5.8 on
the Richter scale, but later significantly revised it upwards.